Asset box management
AE lets you pack the data assets of an existing project into an asset box and unpack it in a new project, so the new project is ready to use out of the box and much less time is spent on basic setup. This applies to scenarios where you create new projects, such as launching a series of projects with similar tracking, migrating a test project to a production project, or adding a new operating region for the same project.
The feature entry is at Project Settings - Asset Box. Only the Project Owner or Root users can use this feature.
Pack an asset box
Packing is the process of organizing and packaging the current project's assets into an asset box. Assets that can be packed include dashboards created by any member, metrics, all cohorts except result cohorts, tags, data tables, entities, and metadata (including custom properties and dimension table properties).
Select assets and related assets
You can view and select, by category, all the project assets to put into the asset box. AE project assets often depend on each other; for example, dashboards depend on reports, and reports depend on metrics. To ensure that the packed assets are usable after unpacking, other assets that your selected assets depend on are also included in the asset box. For example, if you select a custom property, the events and properties that the custom property depends on are also packed.
Select dimension table properties
In event properties or user properties, filter for properties that have a dimension table to view their dimension table properties. By default, when you select the original property, its dimension table properties are included in the asset box. After you select a property, you can enter edit mode from the action column and choose whether to keep the association between the property and the dimension table in the asset box. If you remove the dimension table association, the dimension table properties are not included in the asset box.
Select custom events and custom properties
You can filter custom events and custom properties by event type and property type, and select them for packing.
Submit the selection
After you submit the selection, name the asset box. The selected assets are then checked for elements that cannot be packed.
Orphaned properties
Because event properties must depend on events, if the packed assets contain properties that aren't bound to any event, packing cannot continue. You must manually specify the events associated with these properties to ensure that the asset box is usable when unpacked.
Confirm the asset box contents
View the number of packed assets by type, and after you confirm, download the asset box to your local machine. The asset box file (.te extension) cannot be extracted locally and can only be used with the packing and unpacking features in AE.
Unpack an asset box
After a new project is created, you can use an asset box to set up assets with one click. Once data is connected, you can use the prepared assets to analyze the new project.
Upload the asset box
Select the asset box file generated by packing and upload it to start unpacking. After parsing, you can view all the data assets in the box.
Note: If the Time Zone Converter setting or the exchange rate data source of the asset box's source project differs from that of the current project, assets cannot be generated correctly, so unpacking is not supported. Adjust the current project's settings and try unpacking again.
Conflict strategy
When the project you unpack into is not empty, conflicts with the asset box contents may occur, such as duplicate asset names or inconsistent data types. Currently, only the Discard assets from asset box. strategy is supported, so that existing assets in this project are not affected. Assets that become unusable because the assets they depend on are discarded are also discarded. To avoid too many conflicts, use the unpacking feature only in newly created projects.
Asset owner
You can set an asset owner to own all assets generated from the asset box. This member is responsible for distributing the assets to other project members later. The asset owner must be a member of the current project.
Generate metadata and assets
After you confirm the metadata and assets to generate, the system immediately starts generating them according to the list. This process may take a long time and cannot be interrupted. During this process, you can still run analysis queries in the project, but avoid modifying existing analysis assets, which may cause more conflicts and extend the unpacking time. While waiting, you can leave the unpacking page. We will notify you with a message when unpacking is complete and provide details of the generated assets.
Beta version limitations
Because data tables are limited to the cluster they reside in, packing and unpacking are supported only within the same cluster. Cross-cluster packing and unpacking are not supported yet.